Itanium Blade/Virtual Connect Question.

[The Brit]

This is a question for anyone who is running OpenVMS on itanium Blades, and using Virtual Connect Software.

Within the Blade Profile there is a section called "Fibre Channel Boot Parameters"

My question is basically;  Does this section have any relevance with respect to OpenVMS where booting is controlled by the "BOOT_OPTIONS" utility, and the EFI "Boot Manager" screen.

In the early days, my understanding was that (in the Boot Parameters section) the "Primary" and "Secondary" targets should be set to the WWPN of the Storage Controllers, and that made sense when there was only one Storage Subsystem, and  two controllers to worry about.    I started to think more deeply about this when we added a second Subsystem, and additional controllers.      Now we have 3 storage subsystem and we supply one shadow unit from each subsystem.      All of our shadowsets have 3 units, including the System Disk.

Obviously, I would like to have the option to boot from any of the three units  of the System Disk, and I can set this up BOOT_OPTIONS without any problem.      As far as I can see, there is no way of defining the Controller WWPN's when there are more than 2 controllers.

I would be interested in hearing any thoughts on this issue.

thanks

Dave.

[The Brit]

(Replying to my own post!?)

I put this out there just as information for anyone wondering about the same thing.

It just occurred to me to look at some of my other systems' profiles.

I noted a bunch of them that have been in existance for more than 3 years and when I look at the Boot Parameters in the Profile I see that they are still pointing at the controllers  of an EVA5000 that was decommissioned 2 years ago.       Also I have a new node that was brought up ~6 months ago, and I notice that it has no Boot Parameters at all (fields are blank.)

All of these systems continue to boot from other Storage Subsystems without any issues.

So, to answer my own question:      OpenVMS does not appear to use, or need these parameters.    

Dave.